


Stranger's Child

by Laurelwreath



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family, Family Feels, Married Couple, Reunion Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:41:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurelwreath/pseuds/Laurelwreath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over, and it's time for the heroes to return. For Alys, who barely had time to know her wildling lord, the reunion is fraught with emotion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranger's Child

The night before he left she told him she was with child. Now the child walks, clings to her skirts and looks wide-eyed at the riders who come streaming through the castle gate.  
Alys reaches down to stroke her daughter’s hair. Brynhild is a quiet little creature, reticent but not fearful. In the manner of all children she wails and cries when she falls over or when she is once again told off from climbing on a high chair, but when faced with strangers, she doesn’t cower, merely stares from her safe hiding-place before deciding whether to approach. To Alys she sometimes seems a tiny little stranger herself. When she was still a babe, asleep in a soft milky daze, Alys spent hours scrutinizing her features, trying to see a trace of herself in there. She supposes one’s children are never complete images of one’s own self, no matter how much one wishes they were, but sometimes her daughter’s pale grey eyes gaze at her as if from another world. What in her quietness, her way of moving spryly as a woodland creature are marks of her wildling blood? 

Alys can barely remember what her husband looked like when he left her, but she still recognizes him, if for nothing else then for the total deference that spreads like rings on the water in the men around him. Clad in steel, they look no different from any lord with his knights and soldiers, but their ways they have kept, their faith in their Magnar, their obedience. And he has earned their trust, after all they are home alive, though common foot-soldiers have taken the places of fallen Thenns.  
She watches from the top of the stairs as he dismounts and gives the reins to a boy. He looks up as if finally seeing her, and then slowly climbs the stairs to the landing, to her. Does he dread this as much as I? she wonders. She should be happy, she is happy that her lord and husband has returned, but their marriage has seemed as distant as a dream in the morning, and as unlikely to come true again. Save for the one tangible proof of their union, she could as well imagine it had never happened and she had ended up as the chatelaine of Karhold by some bizarre twist of fate that left Cregan and Arnolf dead. 

The tangible proof clings to her leg even tighter and Alys sees the girl has her thumb in her mouth. She should scold her, but she decides not to mar the momentous occasion with motherly worrying. Sigorn sees the child, and before he has time to raise a questioning look to Alys, she interjects: “Your daughter, my lord. Her name is Brynhild.” How she regrets that she can’t present him with a strong son. But Sigorn kneels down to the child’s level, and for a long moment, they stare unblinkingly at each other, two strangers with the same pale eyes. Now Alys can see what in the girl is him, that slow shy smile like a glacier cracking, those strands of fine fair hair. Somewhere along the way, Sigorn has apparently given up and shaven what remained of his own hair. He’s beardless, too, a fresh nick on his cheek where the shaving-knife has faltered, next to a much wider and longer scar that is still taut and pink. She is moved by a sudden urge to touch it, frightened by how near his death must have been.

Never the demonstrative kind, Sigorn rises heavily to his feet and nods at Alys, their eyes finally meeting. She holds out her hand, and with the other furtively grabs Brynhild’s dress to prevent her from tumbling down the stairs. “Welcome home, my lord. Thank the gods for this day of great joy. I prayed for your safe return.” The words sound stilted and pretentious, and her delivery of them is interrupted by having to glance down to the child who is trying to wrestle free of her hold. Finally the nursemaid sees fit to make an appearance and direct Brynhild safely back inside. Sigorn takes her hand and bows stiffly. “I am glad to return and find you well.” His gaze flickers from her face, circling the castle ramparts and the yard, and flickers back again like he finds it difficult to look at her. Thank the gods that no-one seems to expect a great show of joyful reunion, the soldiers are more interested in dismounting and seeing to their horses or at least pretend to be.

In the bedchamber that night, Alys tries to comb her hair while waiting for her husband, but her hands are unsteady and the comb keeps tangling and tugging. She knows what should happen, probably will happen, and wonders how it will feel to lie with him again. She can barely bring to mind the last time they were together, and bearing and feeding a child has turned her body into something that seems to exist separate from her mind, as a device to bring forth more life even at the expense of its own sustenance. She is no less thin than when she was a maiden, but more drained and haggard. What will he make of me? she thinks. They were driven to each other’s arms by their longing to survive, but now they have survived for a long time without each other. Alys wonders whether she really wants to be near him again, and whether her wants have any significance.  
But he is dignified enough when he comes in the room, merely stands on the threshold looking at her like he hasn’t quite adjusted to being back home either. Finally he comes inside and reaches out his hands to her, as if the sight had been to his satisfaction, and she walks stiffly into them. “I… forgive me, my lord, I can’t believe you have come back” she whispers, pressing her cheek against his chest. There is something familiar after all in his embrace. Perhaps the body remembers what the mind can no longer picture, and recognizes what once was in what is now. His body, too, has changed, last traces of the boy have gone from the man. He presses her against himself so hard she can hardly breathe, resting his cheek against her hair. It’s a long time before she whispers: “It’s getting late, my lord. Should we lie down?”

There are more scars underneath his tunic. “Arrow”, he mutters when her fingers brush his shoulder-blade. “A man tried to knife me”, a jagged scrape under his ribs. “That was a white walker”, when she touches questioningly the line from his temple down to his chin. “I’m lucky it didn’t take off my ear. Emund says I look like my father now anyway. You know, he had no ears, no hair.” He smiles a thin rueful smile. “I don’t mind as long as you keep your life”, Alys grins at his absurd self-consciousness and trails her lips lightly along the scar and on to his lips. The kiss is a relief like she’d been holding her breath all this time and now exhaled.  
When he pulls off her night-shirt, it’s her turn to be self-conscious. But her scars are only thin silvery lines on her breasts and belly, and in the twilight he doesn’t even seem to notice. Will he get me with child again? she thinks. She wishes to give him a son, but the memory of the agony is slow to fade. It took a day before Brynhild was born, and she whimpered, then cried, then screamed for anyone to take away the pain. She was surrounded by unfamiliar faces, Thenn women who could not even speak Common Tongue. They had to mutter and gesticulate and hold her with cold strangers’ hands. And after the pain of the birth was over, it was as if her heart in its turn tore to pieces and birthed a love like which she had never felt before.

Their love-making used to be rough, but now he touches her slowly, as if marveling that it’s really her there in his arms. His breath on her skin is like a whisper, a prayer. She pulls him close to her, inside her, and for a moment they’re still, united at last. Tears well up in her eyes, and in her mind she sends a silent whisper of gratitude to the old gods.

**Author's Note:**

> I shamelessly stole the title from Alan Hollinghurst’s excellent novel.  
> And Brynhild is of course named after Brunhilde, the eponymous Valkyrie in Wagner’s Valkyrie.


End file.
